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iChat sound diappearing, requires restart.

GeeYouEye

GeeYouEye

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Dec 9, 2001
1,670
10
State of Denial
I've got a problem with iChat. After a few hours of being logged in, all sound ceases to play from it. Restarting the app doesn't do anything, but rebooting the computer fixes it, at least for a few hours.

Repaired permissions, zapped PRAM. Any ideas?
 
This exact same thing happened to me two days ago! :eek:

I restarted and the problem hasn't come back (I've been logged on almost the whole time).

:confused: :confused: :confused:
 
Does quitting the coreaudiod process in Activity Monitor and restarting iChat fix it?

Maybe drag com.apple.audio.DeviceSettings.plist to the Desktop as a start.

Next, I'd open up Garageband to reset some Audio MIDI settings and then I'd run the periodicals. :)
 
^Matter of fact, it does fix it, or at least it would seem to for now. Never would have thought that would be a problem, since nothing else was having sound problems.

What does that preference file have to do with iChat?

I've only ever used Garageband for a bit of remixing. No MIDI stuff.

And I let the periodicals run on their own, except weekly, which I run whenever the locate database isn't fresh enough.
 
This happens to me too. Not only iChat, but ALL system sounds disappear! (Move stuff from one location to another, move to trash, empty trash, new mail in Mail, etc) :mad:
 
GeeYouEye said:
^Matter of fact, it does fix it, or at least it would seem to for now. Never would have thought that would be a problem, since nothing else was having sound problems.
Click to expand...


Which bit? Killing the coreaudiod process?


GeeYouEye said:
What does that preference file have to do with iChat?
Click to expand...


Nothing directly, but it is related to some system audio settings and more specifically, the actual hardware settings.


GeeYouEye said:
I've only ever used Garageband for a bit of remixing. No MIDI stuff.
Click to expand...


Umm... What I mean is that opening (and then closing) Garageband resets some of your audio settings. There's a known bug in OSX that messes with some of the audio settings, meaning only certain sounds play. Resetting these settings fixes the problem and the quickest way to reset them is to simply open Garageband. It doesn't have anything to do with whether you use Garageband though.


GeeYouEye said:
And I let the periodicals run on their own, except weekly, which I run whenever the locate database isn't fresh enough.
Click to expand...


Yeah, plus Tiger takes care of them sufficiently if you sleep your machine. :cool:


eXan said:
This happens to me too. Not only iChat, but ALL system sounds disappear! (Move stuff from one location to another, move to trash, empty trash, new mail in Mail, etc) :mad:
Click to expand...


This sounds like that bug I was talking about before in OSX. Open and close Garageband, hopefully that'll get the sounds back. :)
 
I've had this annoying problem occur as well. You can fix it through the following steps:

Open Activity Monitor, find the process coreaudiod, and quit it. Then restart the iChat app, and it should work.

Hopefully Apple fixes this at some point...it's really annoying.
 
Yep, ive had this too.

Sometimes, ill be playing music in the backround from iTunes and someone will message me. Their message pops up with that splashing sound iChat makes when you get a new message, and when that happens, all the sounds from the computer go dead. The music is still paying, but no sound. If i hit the mute/unmute button it seems to bring it back to life, but occasionally the iChat sounds will stay 'muted'.

Other times, as other people described, it will just stop making the sounds (iChat that is) and yeah... its annoying.

Im glad theres a minor fix to it.
 
eXan said:
This happens to me too. Not only iChat, but ALL system sounds disappear! (Move stuff from one location to another, move to trash, empty trash, new mail in Mail, etc) :mad:
Click to expand...

Same problem here. Killing coreaudiod doesn't work. Opening up Garageband doesn't work. Muting and unmuting doesn't work.

All my other sounds seem to work fine. The sound when you turn the volume up and down works. The Toast notification works. Adium sounds work. iTunes works. Games work. Web browser sounds and audio work. But like you said, iChat, Mail, and system sounds all gone. This is especially frustrating for me with Mail since I no longer know when new mail is in since I auto-hide the dock.
 
I made a thread on this a while back. All I do is restart and everything is back. I just find it less stressful than doing all of the above listed ideas.:)
 
macsrockmysocks said:
I made a thread on this a while back. All I do is restart and everything is back. I just find it less stressful than doing all of the above listed ideas.:)
Click to expand...

Restarting works, but only for so long. Hopefully this will be fixed in 10.4.7. It seems every minor, annoying software problem I run in to is fixed in the next update, so hopefully that will continue to pan out.
 
Maybe it'll be fixed in 10.5?

I've noticed this problem a lot (system sounds stop working). So have other friends. I hate that I have to restart a computer just to get my system sounds working again.
 
Ever since I stopped using iChat (unless I video chat, which is hardly ever) and started using Adium, I haven't had a problem. Perhaps iChat is the root of the problem? Or maybe I just haven't noticed my other system sounds not being there, but as far as I know, I haven't had one problem at all.
 
I do use Adium in stead of iChat and got the problem. It might have something to do with FrontRow but until now I was not able to reproduce the problem on purpose.
 
n2o2 said:
I do use Adium in stead of iChat and got the problem. It might have something to do with FrontRow but until now I was not able to reproduce the problem on purpose.
Click to expand...

Hmm... that's weird. I've been using Front Row since I stopped using iChat, and I still haven't had any problems (well, with sound. Front Row still freezes on me a lot though). As far as I can remember, the only real difference between when I remember it wasn't working and now is that I've been using Adium and I updated to 10.4.7. If you also have both and it's still not working for you, then there must be something else different for me since then that I don't remember that fixed it.
 
i think i got it

i think i found the cause (at least for some of you)

i too tried everything listed, including killing coreaudio and deleted the plist file. Didn't work. Then i went into my sound system preference (i still want to say "control panel" - i miss you OS9) and noticed my alert sound volume was all the way down. Seems that iChat uses THIS volume for its alerts, NOT the sytem volume. So this could explain why sound in every other app works when iChat does not. Hope that helps!
 
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